Brigador devs embrace being niche: 'I think we make boy slop, but that's okay'
"First of all, somebody's got to do it." Stellar Jockeys says their abrasive mech sims are intentionally niche, and they're fine with that.
When I spoke with Stellar Jockeys lead artist Jack Monahan and lead designer Hugh Monahan about Brigador Killers, the conversation kept returning to approachability versus depth. The Monahans—whose influences include Troika, Looking Glass and Obsidian—recognize that crunchy, uncompromising games often struggle commercially. Their first game, Brigador, initially bombed sales-wise but later became a cult classic, so they feel qualified to weigh in. They accept that their style won't click for everyone. "We love our games, we're very in this world," Jack said, "But you only need to have an encounter with your mom or someone else's mom to realize none of this makes sense, and we're all speaking Greek all the time." He recounted a vtuber who tried Killers and politely declared, "This is not really for me... I don't care about mechs! I care about the engineers! I care about the people who pilot them! Give me that stuff. All this mech stuff, it's all boy slop!" Jack laughed: "I think we make boy slop, but that's okay." They see getting players to buy in as a design challenge, not a moral failing of the audience.
